In Which September Passes Between Worlds, Asks Four Questions and Receives Twelve Answers, and Is Inspected by a Customs Officer
By the time a lady reaches the grand, golden evening of her life, she has accumulated a great number of things. You know this—when you visited your grandmother on the lake that summer you were surprised to see how many portraits of people you didn’t recognize hung on the walls and how many porcelain ducks and copper pans and books and collectible spoons and old mirrors and scrap wood and half-finished knitting and board games and fireplace pokers she had stuffed away in the corners of her house. You couldn’t think what use a person would have for all that junk, why they would keep it around for all this time, slowly fading in the sun and turning the same shade of parchmenty brown. You thought your grandmother was a bit crazy, to have such a collection of glass owls and china sugar bowls.
That is what the space between Fairyland and our world looks like. It is Grandmother’s big, dark closet, her shed out back, her basement, cluttered with the stuff and nonsense of millennia. The world didn’t really know where else to put it, you see. The earth is frugal; she doesn’t toss out perfectly good bronze helmets or spinning wheels or water clocks. She might need them one day. As for all the portraiture: When you’ve lived as long as she has, you’ll need help remembering your grandchildren, too.
September marveled at the heaps of oddities in the closet between worlds. The ceiling was very low, with roots coming through, and everything had a genteel fade to it, the old lace and code-breaking machines, the anchors and heavy picture frames, the dinosaur bones and orreries. As the Leopard proceeded through the dimly lit passageway, September looked into the painted eyes of pharaohs and blind poets, chemists and serene philosophers. September could tell they were philosophers because they had on drapey clothes, like curtains. But most of the portraits were just people, wearing whatever they had liked to wear when they were living, raking hay or writing diaries or baking bread.
“Sir Wind,” September said, when she had recovered herself and her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously and not call me any pretty names or tease me.”
“Of course, my … September. And you can call me Green. I feel we’re becoming very well acquainted.”
“Why did you take me out of Omaha? Do you take very many girls? Are they all from Nebraska? Why are you being so nice to me?”
September could not be sure, but she thought the Leopard of Little Breezes laughed. It might have been a snort.
“That’s rather more than one question. Therefore, I think it’s only fair I give you rather more than one set of answers.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “One: Omaha is no place for anybody. Two: No, my schedule keeps me quite busy enough. Three: See above. Four: So that you will like me and not be afraid.”
Up ahead, there was a line of folk in long, colorful coats, moving slowly, checking watches, smoothing hair under hats. The Leopard slowed.
“I said no teasing,” said September.
“One: I was lonely. Two: I have been known to spirit a child or two away, I shan’t lie. It is the nature of winds to Snatch and Grasp at things, and Blow Them Away. Three: Nebraska does not grow many of the kinds of girls who ought to go to Fairyland. Four: If I were not nice, and did not know the way to Fairyland, and did not have a rather spectacular cat, you would not smile at me or say amusing things. You would tell me politely that you like teacups and small dogs and to please be on my way.”
They came up short and took their place in line. Everyone towered above September—the line might have been long or short; she could not tell. September leapt off of the Leopard and onto the dry, compact dirt of the closet between worlds. The Green Wind hopped lightly down beside her.
“You said I was ill-tempered! Was that really why?”
“One: There is a department in Fairyland entirely devoted to spiriting off young boys and girls (mostly orphans, but we have become more liberal in this late age), so that we may have a ready supply of a certain kind of story to tell when winter comes and there is nothing to do but drink fennel beer and peer at the hearth. Two: See above. Three: Dry, brown places are prime real estate for children who want to escape them. It’s much harder to find wastrels in New York City to fly about on a Leopard. After all, they have the Metropolitan Museum to occupy them. Four: I am not being very nice at all. See how I lie to you and make you do things my way? That is so you will be ready to live in Fairyland, where this sort of thing is considered the height of manners.”
September curled her fists. She tried very hard not to cry.
“Green! Stop it! I just want to know—”
“One! Because you were born in—”
“If I am special,” finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it’s because she’s special, because she’s smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and … I don’t know that I’m any of those things. I don’t even know that I’m as ill-tempered as all that. I’m not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl’s house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn’t mean to choose me at all, because I’m not like storybook girls. I’m short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn’t even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.”
The Leopard turned her prodigious spotted head and looked at September with large, solemn yellow eyes.
“We came for you,” she growled. “Just you.”
The big cat licked the child’s cheek roughly. September smiled, just a little. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the green jacket.
“NEXT!” boomed a deep, severe voice that echoed all over the closet. It was so strong that they were blown back into the folk who had silently joined the line behind them. The party in front of them, all pink eye shadow and spangled, spiky hair, explod
ed past a tall podium in a flutter of papers and luggage.
At the top of the podium loomed an enormous gargoyle, its face a mass of bronze and black rock, waggling stone eyebrows and a stern metal jaw. Its lolling eyes burned red flames. Its heavy arms clicked and whirred, greasy pistons pumping. The creature’s chest was plated in gnarled, knuckled silver, half open along a thick seam, showing a thudding, white-violet heart within.
“Papers!” the gargoyle thundered. Portraits rattled along the earthen walls. Its breath was smoky and hot, and in its mechanical jaw, a steel tongue rattled. September shrank against the Leopard, the force of the gargoyle’s breath pushing at her face.
“Betsy Basilstalk you come out of there this second!” the Green Wind hollered back, though not quite so loud, having no leather-bellow lungs to help him along.
The iron gargoyle paused. “No,” it bellowed.
“You’re not impressing anyone, you know,” sighed the Green Wind.
“She’s impressed. Look, she’s all shaking and things,” replied the gargoyle.